Peter Frost's anthropology blog, with special reference to sexual selection and the evolution of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Sometimes the consensus is phony

Migrants arriving on the island of Lampedusa (Wikicommons). The NATO-led invasion of
Libya has opened a huge breach in Europe's defences.

A
synthesis has been forming in the field of human biodiversity. It may be
summarized as follows:

1.
Human evolution did not end in the Pleistocene or even slow down. In fact, it
speeded up with the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, when the pace of
genetic change rose over a hundred-fold. Humans were no longer adapting to
relatively static natural environments but rather to faster-changing cultural
environments of their own making. Our ancestors thus directed their own
evolution. They created new ways of life, which in turn influenced who would
survive and who wouldn't.

2.
When life or death depends on your ability to follow a certain way of life, you
are necessarily being selected for certain heritable characteristics. Some of
these are dietary—an ability to digest milk or certain foods. Others, however,
are mental and behavioral, things like aptitudes, personality type, and
behavioral predispositions. This is because a way of life involves thinking and
behaving in specific ways. Keep in mind, too, that most mental and behavioral
traits have moderate to high heritability.

3.
This gene-culture co-evolution began when humans had already spread over the
whole world, from the equator to the arctic. So it followed trajectories that differed
from one geographic population to another. Even when these populations had to
adapt to similar ways of life, they may have done so differently, thus opening
up (or closing off) different possibilities for further gene-culture
co-evolution. Therefore, on theoretical grounds alone, human populations should
differ in the genetic adaptations they have acquired. The differences should
generally be small and statistical, being noticeable only when one compares
large numbers of individuals. Nonetheless, even small differences, when added
up over many individuals and many generations, can greatly influence the way a society
grows and develops.

4.
Humans have thus altered their environment via culture, and this man-made
environment has altered humans via natural selection. This is probably the
farthest we can go in formulating a unified theory of human biodiversity. For Gregory
Clark, the key factor was the rise of settled, pacified societies, where people
could get ahead through work and trade, rather than through violence and
plunder. For Henry Harpending and Greg Cochrane, it was the advent of
agriculture and, later, civilization. For J. Philippe Rushton and Ed Miller, it
was the entry of humans into cold northern environments, which increased
selection for more parental investment, slower life history, and higher
cognitive performance. Each of these authors has identified part of the big
picture, but the picture itself is too big to reduce to a single factor.

5.
Antiracist scholars have argued against the significance of human biodiversity,
but their arguments typically reflect a lack of evolutionary thinking. Yes,
human populations are open to gene flow and are thus not sharply defined (if
they were, they would be species). It
doesn't follow, however, that the only legitimate objects of study are sharply
defined ones. Few things in this world would pass that test.

Yes,
genes vary much more within human populations than between them, but these two
kinds of genetic variation are not comparable. A population boundary typically
coincides with a geographic or ecological barrier, such as a change from one
vegetation zone to another or, in humans, a change from one way of life to
another. It thus separates not only different populations but also differing pressures
of natural selection. This is why genetic variation within a population differs
qualitatively from genetic variation between populations. The first kind cannot
be ironed out by similar selection pressures and thus tends to involve genes of
little or no selective value. The second kind occurs across population
boundaries, which tend to separate different ecosystems, different vegetation
zones, different ways of life ... and different selection pressures. So the
genes matter a lot more.

This
isn't just theory. We see the same genetic overlap between many sibling species
that are nonetheless distinct anatomically and behaviorally. Because such
species have arisen over a relatively short span of time, like human
populations, they have been made different primarily by natural
selection, so the genetic differences between them are more likely to have
adaptive, functional consequences ... as opposed to "junk
variability" that slowly accumulates over time.

Why is the above
so controversial?

The
above synthesis should not be controversial. Yet it is. In fact, it scarcely
resembles acceptable thinking within academia and even less so within society
at large. There are two main reasons.

The war on racism

In
the debate over nature versus nurture, the weight of opinion shifted toward the
latter during the 20th century. This shift began during the mid-1910s and was
initially a reaction against the extreme claims being made for genetic
determinism. In reading the literature of the time, one is struck by the
restraint of early proponents of environmental determinism, especially when
they argue against race differences in mental makeup. An example appears in The Clash of Colour (1925), whose author
condemned America's Jim Crow laws and the hypocrisy of proclaiming the rights
of Europeans to self-determination while ignoring those of Africans and Asians.
Nonetheless, like the young Franz Boas, he was reluctant to deny the existence
of mental differences:

I
would submit the principle that, although differences of racial mental
qualities are relatively small, so small as to be indistinguishable with
certainty in individuals, they are yet of great importance for the life of
nations, because they exert throughout many generations a constant bias upon
the development of their culture and their institutions. (Mathews, 1925, p.
151)

That
was enlightened thinking in the 1920s. The early 1930s brought a radical turn
with Hitler's arrival to power and a growing sense of urgency that led many
Jewish and non-Jewish scholars to declare war on "racism." The word
itself was initially a synonym for Nazism, and even today Nazi Germany still
holds a central place in antiracist discourse.

Why
didn't the war on racism end when the Second World War ended? For one thing,
many people, feared a third global conflict in which anti-Semitism would play a
dominant role. For another, antiracism took on a life of its own during the
Cold War, when the two superpowers were vying for influence over the emerging
countries of Asia and Africa.

Globalism

The
end of the Cold War might have brought an end to the war on racism, or at least
a winding down, had it not replaced socialism with an even more radical
project: globalism. This is the hallmark of "late capitalism," a
stage of historical development when the elites no longer feel restrained by
national identity and are thus freer to enrich themselves at their host
society's expense, mainly by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and by
insourcing low-wage labor for jobs that cannot be relocated, such as those in
construction and services. That's globalism in a nutshell.

This
two-way movement redistributes wealth from owners of labor to owners of
capital. Businesses get not only a cheaper workforce but also weaker labor and
environmental standards. To stay competitive, workers in high-wage countries
have to accept lower pay and a return to working conditions of another age. The
top 10% are thus pulling farther and farther ahead of everyone else throughout
the developed world. They're getting richer ... not by making a better product
but by making the same product with cheaper and less troublesome inputs of
labor. This is not a win-win situation, and the potential for revolutionary
unrest is high.

To
stave off unrest, economic systems require legitimacy, and legitimacy is made
possible by ideology: a vision of a better future; how we can get there from
here; and why we're not getting there despite the best efforts. Economic
systems don't create ideology, but they do create conditions that favor some
ideologies over others. With the collapse of the old left in the late 1980s,
and the rise of market globalization, antiracism found a new purpose ... as a
source of legitimacy for the globalist project.

I
saw this up close in an antiracist organization during the mid to late 1980s.
Truth be told, we mostly did things like marching in the May Day parade,
agitating for a higher minimum wage, denouncing the U.S. intervention in
Panama, organizing talks about Salvador Allende and what went wrong in Chile
... you get the drift. Antiracism was subservient to the political left. This
was not a natural state of affairs, since the antiracist movement—like the Left
in general—is a coalition of ethnic/religious factions that prefer to pursue
their own narrow interests. This weakness was known to the political right,
many of whom tried to exploit it by supporting Muslim fundamentalists in
Afghanistan and elsewhere and black nationalists in Africa, Haiti, and the U.S.
Yes, politics makes strange bedfellows.

With
the onset of the 1990s, no one seemed to believe in socialism anymore and we
wanted to tap into corporate sources of funding. So we reoriented. Leftist
rhetoric was out and slick marketing in. Our educational materials looked
glossier but now featured crude "Archie Bunker" caricatures of
working people, and the language seemed increasingly anti-white. I remember
feeling upset, even angry. So I left.

Looking
back, I realize things had to happen that way. With the disintegration of the
old socialist left, antiracists were freer to follow their natural
inclinations, first by replacing class politics with identity politics, and
second by making common cause with the political right, especially for the
project of creating a globalized economy. Antiracism became a means to a new
end.

This
is the context that now frames the war on racism. For people in a position to
influence public policy, antiracism is not only a moral imperative but also an
economic one. It makes the difference between a sluggish return on investment
of only 2 to 3% (which is typical in a mature economy) and a much higher one.

What to do?

Normally,
I would advise caution. People need time to change their minds, especially on a
topic as emotional as this one. When tempers flare, it's usually better to let
the matter drop and return later. That's not cowardice; it's just a recognition
of human limitations. Also, the other side may prove to be right. So, in a
normal world, debate should run its course, and the policy implications
discussed only when almost everyone has been convinced one way or the other.

Unfortunately,
our world is far from normal. A lot of money is being spent to push a phony
political consensus against any controls on immigration. This isn't being done
in the dark by a few conspirators. It's being done in the full light of day by
all kinds of people: agribusiness, Tyson Foods, Mark Zuckerberg, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, and small-time operations ranging from landscapers to
fast-food joints. They all want cheaper labor because they're competing against
others who likewise want cheaper labor. It's that simple ... and stupid.

This
phony consensus is also being pushed at a time when the demographic cauldron of
the Third World is boiling over. This is particularly so in sub-Saharan Africa,
where the decline in fertility has stalled and actually reversed in some
countries. The resulting population overflow is now following the path of least
resistance—northward, especially with the chaos due to the NATO-led invasion of
Libya. In the current context, immigration controls should be strengthened, and
yet there is lobbying to make them even weaker. The idiocy is beyond belief.

For
these reasons, we cannot wait until even the most hardboiled skeptics are
convinced. We must act now to bring anti-globalist parties to power: the UKIP
in Britain, the Front national in France, the Partij voor de Vrijheid in the
Netherlands, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and the
Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden. How, you may ask? It's not too complicated. Just
go into the voting booth and vote. You don't even have to talk about your dirty
deed afterwards.

It
looks like such parties will emerge in Canada and the United States only when
people have seen what can be done in Europe. Until then, the tail must wag the
dog. We in North America can nonetheless prepare the way by learning to speak
up and stand up, and by recognizing that the "Right" is just as
problematic as the "Left."

References

Clark,
G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms. A Brief
Economic History of the World, Princeton University Press, Princeton and
Oxford.

Clark,
G. (2009a). The indicted and the wealthy:
surnames, reproductive success, genetic selection and social class in
pre-industrial England,

I'll be waiting for a retraction. It may all be a little too late and sadly hardly anyone will get the memo.

I wanted to link to a Kevin MacDonald article on how Jews in America dominated the Sociology and anthropology departments with Frank Boas controlling who got in and what not. But the Public Library where I am writing from, has blocked his site. So much for your call for nationalism.

The end of the Cold War might have brought an end to the war on racism, or at least a winding down, had it not replaced socialism with an even more radical project: globalism. This is the hallmark of "late capitalism," a stage of historical development when the elites no longer feel restrained by national identity and are thus freer to enrich themselves at their host society's expense, mainly by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and by insourcing low-wage labor for jobs that cannot be relocated, such as those in construction and services. That's globalism in a nutshell.

I don't know if globalism is merely a feature of "late capitalism". It was there at the outset of the modern era in the 16th century. Significant population movements and greater economic integration began at the outset.

The difference is that until the middle of the 20th century, Western middle and lower classes benefitted from this globalism - from the population movements and economic integration. Cheap or free land was available in the colonies for poorer farmers, cheaper commodities were available, more profit opportunities were available for businessmen, administrative jobs were available in the colonies, etc. By the latter half of the 20th century, Western middle and lower classes were no longer benefiting from globalism and its primary beneficiaries were the wealthy and non-Western populations.

Anon, yes Ireland has many unemployed and is letting in more immigrants now than ever before. So is Denmark, which some bad jokers will tell you has shown a democracy can reduce integration.

The people who are being hurt by immigration, don't actually run the countries in which they are the majority. It is higher social class people who run things, and that social class is where the behavioural predispositions necessary for running things and creating wealth are concentrated.

Peter, the final straw for you was that poster from the anti racist organisation that you talked about a while ago. There is a concealed loathing for the lower orders (" Not long before I left, we received a poster for distribution. It showed a white man yelling 'You're stealing my job' at a dark-skinned person. What struck me was the way the two were portrayed. The white man had a bald head, a hideous face, and a huge beer belly. He was also dressed in overalls, presumably to show he was a manual laborer. In contrast, the dark-skinned man was neatly dressed and normal in appearance.).

And as belief that race is unimportant is the sine qua non that defines the upper class whites, it lets them feel virtuous about benefiting from the destruction of their people. The classes that the rulers are drawn from are very very good at running things; it comes naturally to them. I mean, from a few things you've said over the years I would think your parentage is not really working class. In that anti racist organisation you were in, I bet there were a high proportion of upper middle class people at the top.

Ukip has two MPs they would need 200, same for the FN. That nations have a 'life' suggests that nations can die.

Maybe "the above synthesis" is controversial because even though you start as a seemingly moderate with a nuanced position you end with:

"We must act now to bring anti-globalist parties to power: the UKIP in Britain, the Front national in France, the Partij voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden"

I'm glad you brought up that people of lower SES are more affected by all this but considering the views of many, if not most, people who present what you do here (and even some of the views you yourself present here), it has to be asked how genuine that concern of yours really is. No offense intended, just my personal prior.

"Before Shatter Ireland granted Citizenship to around two hundred Non Europeans a year, within a few months in office Shatter had streamlined the process and the total was cranked up exponentially, on just one day in 2012 four thousand, that's 4000! Third Worlders were granted Citizenship, the number annually was around 55,000, up from 200.

The evil genius of vague sounding terms such as ''Equality Minister'' means scumbags such as Shatter get to stick their beak into areas of public life which would be deemed ''off limits'' to someone with an actual real position, so in order to help facilitate his one man mission to dispossess the Irish the aptly named Shatter was able to attack the Irish media for not being Multicultural enough, many Irish people may have been confused over when they actually decided to become multicultural, but nevertheless just like the BBC's Danny Cohen Shatter slammed RTE for “I don’t yet believe RTÉ has adequately recognised the changing Ireland, the intercultural nature of Ireland, the different strands of backgrounds that we have in Ireland and the richness of the backgrounds,” said Minister Shatter in his address. ''

The problem of course is creating the mentality within a population that weakens their resistance to watching their children's birth right be handed over to racial aliens. Irish people don't have a history of colonialism, they haven't committed very many atrocities upon other ethnic groups, whether real of imagined, they haven't taken part in bombing campaigns in the Middle East, they weren't even involved in World War 2...Ooops what's that? According to the energetic Shatter the very fact Ireland stayed out of the war means they have a ''Dark Past'' to confront because they were playing dominoes and drinking Guinness while Jews were being turned into soap and pillows

'There were many who did nothing in the face of the industrialised genocide and the destruction of European Jewish civilisation. Indeed the Irish Government of the day sat on its hands. And even after the death camps were liberated, the Irish Government denied Jews refuge in Ireland.''

And so for nothing more than minding their own business the Irish are now being introduced to a myth of self loathing and guilt, as always the Holocaust is being used to beat all Europeans into submission over the perfectly moral and healthy wish to remain who and what they are in their own lands."

The trouble with dumb micks is that they are more concerned with nursing ancient grudges against the English than standing with them to limit Third World infiltrators. They don't seem to realize that differences over transsubstantiation are utterly obsolete; a much better thing to do would be to lay off the Guinness and form your own version of UKIP, FN, Lega Nord etc. But as per bloody usual, they all just whine about Cromwell and the Famine when the genocide planned for them by that smarmy Semitic rat Shatter is ten times as bad as those events combined. Their notorious stupidity makes them no match for the race replacers, they'll simply be baffled by how notions like 'equality' and 'diversity' will mean no Irish child will be able to get a job - esp in the public srctot - thanks to quotas and anti-White discrimination.

How do I know all this about those alcoholic, rosary-rattling clowns? I am one and know how deluded and biddable they are. I've spent my life in Britain and can assute them Brits and Continentals undetstand this way more than the Irish. SJW idiot personifies the Irish.

The Irish certainly don't have as high as aspirations as the English or Germans but they are naturally ethnocentric, more ethnocentric than most other white groups, and this could be their saving grace.

I’m not Irish (English & Dutch ancestry) but I’ve spent a fair amount of time among the Irish, especially in Cambridge / Boston but also in the UK. In the Boston area, the Irish are content to dominate the bar scene, liquor sales, and the police and fire departments, and they’re very territorial about these dominions but their interest is not purely commercial. Interestingly, if you go to the trendy non-Irish bars around Boston, you’ll find more diversity, but Irish bars will usually be close to 100% white. Their customs (food, music, jokes, etc) seem to be unappealing to non-whites. I knew some guys from India who loathed Irish bars, but you would regularly find Germans and other Europeans frequenting Irish bars, who probably felt more at ease with the Irish folkish customs. The Irish also get really worked up about affirmative action. Just bring up affirmative action for police and fire departments at an Irish bar and you’ll see some real emotion.

Up until recently, the Irish defined “the other” as the British, but this could easily be re-directed, and probably will be so once they’re introduced to more diversity in Ireland. Look at it this way, based on Cavalli-Sforza’s genetic distances, the Irish are probably around 109 times more closely related to the British than to black Africans — and you do not need to know anything about genetics to feel this sense of relatedness when diversity is present. It’s just a natural feeling. Combine the Irishman’s natural sense of ethnocentrism with Third World immigration. Imagine an IRA directed against diversity rather than the British. This could be the future for Ireland.

VOTING!- thats your solution!!!god help us. I would wager that every one of those nationalist parties is owned and operated by the jews. Jews own the system and you do not vote them out by playing around within their system, you withdraw from it, and create your own nation within but apart from the zio-nation. White flight is step one, step two is defending your turf from any incursions,, the crips do it, MS-13 does it, now the WHITES must do it. And dont fcuking vote!

The Irish are naturally friendly and even humble. Having worked in criminal defense legal work with cops of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, I think that the Irish probably make some of the best police officers in the world -- a job which takes a certain type of people skills. It seems that this is a job the Irish were genetically bred for.

Conversely, blacks might well make the worst police officers I've encountered. Having very fragile egos, the slightest hint of disrespect towards black police officers sets them off on (sometimes dangerous) authority tirades.

1.culture alters the environment that influences natural selection 2.gene-pools are discrete but mutable3.differences between gene-pools are adaptive not coincidental

Why is this so contraversial?

Anti-racists have argued1.gene-pools are not worth studying2.gene-pools are coincidental

The war on racism....

*******

It's a subtle difference but it makes a difference (imo). Unless HBDers are arguing that they pursue HBD study _because_ they are evolved to do so, then pursuing HBD is just one possible cultural direction to move in.

*********

The Irish have played useful idiot in bringing an end to Anglo civilisation but (imo) Anglo civilisation would have declined anyway because it is prone to arrogance and pedantry (ie. see above), and inflexibility.

**************

Scandinavian and Germanic civilisations have not yet collapsed. (Norway has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, brand-scandinavia is alive and well in design and cinema. German engineering etc.). Slavic civilisation has yet to flourish (imo). Slavs are quintessentially European with a history of oppression that gives them an intellectual immunity from neo-liberalist guilt-inducing ideology. French civilisation will survive, a couple of shades darker, but quintessentially French culturally - because French culture is more grounded in natural cycles. It is more visceral _and_ more intellectual than Anglo culture. vis. Gen Id compared to BNP.

Ultimately what matters is family planning.

[PS. I've edited so many times there seems to be a suspicion that I am in fact a robot - nope I'm Anglo!]

It will crash into its own stupidity eventually because if you have slave car workers in China and slave car workers in the US then neither has the money to buy a car.

Globalization could only ever work temporarily - shifting production from the west to the east could only be sustained by the west paying for their consumption with debt and after 20-30 years of increasing western debt the whole system is now starting to unravel.

So it's a question of whether the globalists can be stopped before their short term greed does more damage than can ever be fixed.

The way I read the situation is, the shift is towards wealth in the east (gold) and poverty in the west (low wage labour).

Peter, I don't know if your boat graphic was influenced by my comment on the previous post but it would be interesting to see a bit of analysis as to why after millions of years, Africans are migrating, at great risk and many deaths, to Europe across the Med, instead of via the natural land bridge between Africa and Asia that was used until now. Is it true that there is a fence across the Sinai and that many Africans are caught in the Sinai being held and tortured for ransom? I've just watched a prog about Mexican migrants across the Arizona desert and one woman who is tracing relatives of dead bodies said that since the US militarised the border in 2000, bodies in the desert have gone up from 20pa to 162pa. Fences affect the direction of migration flow.

There's always a cost for anything worthwhile in this world. And doing nothing can also be costly.

Anon,

There is some continuity between globalism and the earlier imperialist projects, particularly during their later phases. If WWII had never happened, we might have gone straight from imperialism to globalism, and things would be a lot worse.

Other comments:

Ireland is a cultural colony of the United States, partly because of the common language and partly because so many Irish people have emigrated to the U.S. This is what I find so strange: American-style antiracism has been unthinkingly adopted in places like Ireland despite the considerable differences in history.

Anonymous,

This is why I dislike "White nationalists." They're more interested in sterile radicalism and anonymous exhibitionism than in engaging with the real world.

Anon,

There is a very nasty fence across the Sinai, but that's only part of the reason. If you want to go from Africa to a European Union country, the simplest route is to jump over the border fence at Melilla. One fence -- one border -- and you're home free!

There seems to be a huge gulf between the American-European and European-European view of what is going on and how to fix it. For many Europeans, American power is the problem. What led to the Greek economic crash? Why is Germany still paying reparations? Why is media coverage so biased? Why is there no coverage of Europe on European News channels? What are American HBD bloggers really interested in achieving?

Science say ''humans AREN'T DIVINES''. Ordinary and less courageous people deny human biology because it affect directly the most important human system beliefs, called ''anthropocentrism'' = all religions.

Science is attacking the nucleo of human matrix. As you ''say'' to ant that your reality is not unique and special. Leftism is ultimate human ego OR emotions. Human emotions incidentally evolved to supply human curiosity.

"The way I read the situation is, the shift is towards wealth in the east (gold) and poverty in the west (low wage labour)."

My point is/was that the *form* of globalization that came into effect over the last 30 years which has been presented as durable could only ever be temporary because it unbalanced supply and demand and that imbalance could only be squared away with ever increasing debt.

The current form is unbalanced and can't survive.

The three forms it could devolve to are:

1) a balance of high supply and demand2) a balance of very low supply and demand (aka economic collapse)3) a straight swap of both supply and demand from west to east i.e. the transfer of supply being the first stage and the transfer of demand being the coming second stage

All three of those would rebalance the system.

I think (2) is the actual aim of the globalists, not because they want collapse because they are too greedy to think ahead and so will try and drive down wages everywhere at once despite that destroying demand everywhere at once leading to a collapse.

China could try to create (3) for themselves to avoid (2) by letting demand rise in China and supplying their own demand rather than supplying debt-based western demand. This will almost certainly require nationalizing the assets of western corporations in China to stop them off-shoring somewhere cheaper.

We could have had (1) if we'd had a high stewardship elite at the critical moment, unfortunately we didn't and it seems very unlikely now.

.

"If WWII had never happened, we might have gone straight from imperialism to globalism, and things would be a lot worse."

Dunno. I think there are two necessary conditions for the form of globalism we got:

1) the technological ability allowing the 1% to defect in this way2) willingness of the 1% to defect

I don't think the first condition was met until the 1980s.

.

Point being it was perfectly possible to create a form of globalization that benefited both the West and East Asia by swapping supply and demand in tranches over time. It would have been slower though and the globalists are too greedy.

"For Henry Harpending and Greg Cochrane, it was the advent of agriculture and, later, civilization...."

Peter,

Depends on what you call civilization. Settlement and trade had to precede agriculture. Farming is the specialization of hummock gardening around homes.

"Hanging" gardens of Babylon were rooftop gardens. Farms are gardens outsourced to people too stupid to hunt, gather, or sit and trade. (One thing that really pissed Hitler off was the taunt "Cologne was a Jewish trading post 4,000 years before "Germans" existed.")

See Jane Jacobs, "The Economy of Cities" or "Death and Life of..." She made economics a predictive science when her imaginary city of Obsidian was found, and trading Jericho was older than agricultural Jericho. Trading: 10,000 years. farming 6,000.

There's no denying there are all sorts of humans, the same way there are all sorts of cats and dogs. I think "race," though, does as much harm to common discourse as misused "dimension" does to physics.

Note that there weren't any "Jews" 6700 years ago. Abraham was what? a couple of your usual 25-year generations before Akhenaten or somebody, and Moses no more than about 120 years later. Even if he did live bis hundert-swanzig...

An' one last kick at the can" trading has to be far more than 10,000 years old. There is jewellery in the Aurignacian, 60,000 years ago.

At least speculatively there is division of labour among proto-humans knapping tools around shared pits, "factories," 600,000 (!) years ago. I'd guess the jury is still out on that one, but clearly talk, barter, and manu-facturing are all far older than agri-culture.

Welcome to my blog! For the most part, this page will be an extension of my website, with comments relating to my research. But it will also branch out into more general discussions of human evolution.